Texas Hold-Up — Day 5

Logline 1:  Dog Day Afternoon meets Bridesmaids

Genre: Comedy

Premise:  Three female bank tellers in Texas decide to rob their own bank to teach their chauvinist bosses a lesson. But when actual bank robbers show up on the same day, and the vault ends up being full of millions in Mexican drug money, the ladies fear they've bitten off more than they can chew.

Protagonists:  Connie (35), Helen (65), and Rose (23).

ACT I

Connie, Helen and Rose are the three hardest working bank tellers in all of Texas. Unfortunately, the owners of their small bank are a boys-club of extremely chauvinist assholes who constantly harass and disrespect their mostly-female staff. 

Inciting incident:  The bank gets a new branch manager, a very aggressive sleazebag named Rick, who also happens to be the son of the bank president. When Rick corners Rose in the vault and tells her she'll need to start performing sexual favors for him if she wants to keep her job, the ladies decide that they've had enough. They band together and hatch a secret plot to stage a robbery of the bank to teach their bosses a lesson, and line their pockets with a little consolation money as well.

The ladies decide to hire a "crew" to conduct the robbery while they act as secret agents on the inside. The plan is to hit the bank on a slow day, since they know that there will be fewer customers in the bank to worry about, and only a few hundred thousand dollars in the vault... enough money for them to stuff their mattresses with, but not so much that they'll have to worry about the Federal Government getting too interested in the robbery.

They approach Helen's Mexican landscaper José with their plan, and ask him if he could put together a crew of fake bank robbers to stage the hold-up. Afterwards, the robbers will meet up with the ladies and divvy-up the take. Jose agrees, and says he has a cousin, Ramón—an out of work actor, and his friends—who would probably be up for the risky job. As the robbery is underway, the ladies will pretend to be surprised along with the rest of the staff and customers, but will secretly be helping the robbers by making sure none of the bank's alarms are tripped, and helping to influence their coworkers into compliance / submission. The ladies tell José that they don't want to meet the robbers beforehand, because they want to act as surprised and scared as possible during the robbery.  

Act I turning point:  The day of the robbery has come. Ramón and his fake crew sit in a sedan across the street from the bank trying to work up their courage. Between the three of them, they have one antique shotgun (with no bullets) and a water pistol inside a brown paper bag. They are a loveable collection of sweethearts and dim wits, and clearly very nervous, but they need this money to fund a play they want to put on. As they pull down their masks and are just about jump out of the car, a black van screeches up in front of the bank and six masked men with heavy-duty automatic weapons and body armor pour out of the back of the van and storm the bank. The fake robbers realize that they are witnessing a REAL robbery, and panic and flee.

ACT II — first half

The comic conceit of the first half of Act II is that the ladies don't realize that their "friendly" robbers have been replaced by actual bloodthirsty murderers. So they marvel at the impressiveness of Ramón's fake robbery crew, take liberties and collude in ways that astound the robbers and their coworkers alike, and only slowly start to feel that something might be amiss—all to hilarious effect.

Despite the demands of the robbers, Rick, the asshole bank manager, resists opening the vault. The ladies assume it's just pride, since Rick is such an asshole, and join in on pressuring him. Finally, under extreme duress, Rick caves in, and goes to fetch the keys to the vault. Despite the surprisingly convincing zeal of the robbers, and some rougher exchanges than hoped for, things still seem to be going according to plan, from the ladies perspective. Until two dramatic revelations:

Midpoint: The ladies are split into two groups. As Connie accompanies the robbers and Rick to open the vault, Helen and Rose remain in the main lobby with the rest of the gang and hostages. Racked with guilt from fleeing earlier, Ramón returns to warn the ladies about the true nature of their predicament. (He might come in to the bank pretending to be a customer, who is then taken hostage so he can deliver the news to the ladies in person.)

Helen and Rose blanch upon the realization that they are stuck in the middle of a REAL robbery. Meanwhile, at the vault, the door swings open and instead of the few hundred thousand dollars the ladies were expecting, there is a pile of cash all the way up to the ceiling, roughly 50 million dollars in used bills. The robbers are overjoyed, and Rick is morose. But Connie is the only one who surprised. As the ladies are reunited and share their two pieces of bad news, the terrifying reality of the money's origin becomes clear: It is illicit drug money from a Mexican drug cartel, and Rick (and probably the bank's owners) are laundering money for the cartel. (Rick it turns out was working late at the bank the night before, which is when the cash would have secretly been dropped off without the ladies' knowledge.) 

Act II - second half, (and beyond)

The ladies realize, for numerous reasons, that now they MUST keep this money for themselves, (they can't let it go to the cartel, or to real bank robbers, and they can't let the owners of the bank get away with their crimes either.)  They recommit to their plan despite the now much higher stakes all-around. The remainder of acts II and III follow the ladies as they try to figure out a way to outsmart the robbers, their coworkers, and the forces arrayed against them outside the bank.

Subplots:  The rest of Ramón's dim-witted crew (and/or José) could return to the the bank to try and help the ladies. But the most important subplot (both in terms of adding pressure to the situation, and creating an outside ally to the ladies) will be to establish the response of law enforcement. Some possible subplots there include: 

THE DEA: Since the ladies have managed to prevent any alarms from being tripped, no police have discovered the robbery in progress. But shortly after the vault is sprung at the midpoint all hell breaks lose outside, as a small army of masked, Drug Enforcement Agency SWAT teams show up and surround the bank. The fact that it's the DEA and not local police is doubly alarming to the ladies (and robbers). This not only helps confirm that the money in the vault is somehow drug related, but even more terrifyingly, it suggests that the DEA army on their doorstep might actually be a drug cartel army, masquerading as the DEA, and that they've come to reclaim their illicit cash. (Rick could have secretly alerted the cartel, or opening the vault might have tripped a silent alarm.)

LOCAL POLICE: There should probably be a bare-bones, local police response, so that the ladies can have an actual ally outside: namely Sheriff Colby, a steady hand and cool customer who is trying to diffuse the situation while see through the fog of events. (Michael Parks as the Sheriff in Kill Bill comes to mind.) Perhaps he sniffs out that the ladies might also be suspects, as he works with them to try and end the standoff with the robbers. If there IS a local police presence, they will need to arrive before the DEA. In that way, when the DEA army descends, Sheriff Colby will be a natural antagonist to them: resenting them pulling jurisdiction; realizing that both the massive size of their swat response—and the fact that it is the DEA at all—is suspicious; and ultimately, realizing how much danger he, his men and everyone inside the bank are in once he discovers that the DEA army are really cartel shock troops. All of this helps to set up a very dangerous second conflict / power-struggle outside of the bank, with consequences for the ladies, their mission, and their chances of escape.